Brodsworth Hall

Country house built 1861–63. Designed by Chevalier Casentini of Lucca, Italy for Charles Thellusson, with Philip Wilkinson of London as executive architect. The building is constructed in ashlar limestone with lead and slate roofs.

The main structure is a two-storey rectangular range with a nine-bay entrance front and a thirteen-bay garden front on the left return. A lower double service wing is set back on the right return. The style is Italianate throughout.

The entrance front features a rusticated ground floor with projecting quoins above. Ground-floor windows are transomed casements with roller shutters, while the deep first-floor band contains two-pane sashes. The central three bays break forward and carry a tetrastyle porte-cochere, though its columns are now partly encased in concrete. Within this feature is a double door with fanlight, flanked by niches with lamp brackets and pilasters. A balustrade with finialled urns crowns this section. The central first-floor opening has an architrave and pediment. Bays 2 and 7 have aprons, architraves and segmental pediments, whilst other bays have plain reveals. A modillioned eaves cornice with balustrade containing terracotta balusters and urns runs across the front. The solid parapet above the central bays steps up and features a sunken panel and cornice.

The service wing to the right has sashes with glazing bars and a first-floor band, a cornice with blocking course, and a hipped roof with corniced ashlar ridge stacks.

The rear elevation shows seven unarticulated bays with flat-arched openings to the ground floor and architraves and cornices to first-floor openings. The central first-floor window has a pediment.

The garden front on the left return is arranged as 1:4:3:4:1 bays. Like the front, it has a central entrance feature with heavy architrave and cornice breaking forward over consoles, with a corniced panel above and urns. The four-bay sections break forward and feature plain-ashlar walling with Gibbs surrounds, moulded string courses and cornices. All first-floor bays have architraved surrounds; central bays have pediments whilst end bays have segmental pediments, with cornices elsewhere. Balustrade parapets with panels sit above the four-bay projections.

The interior contains a remarkable original scheme of decoration and furnishing that survives intact. Scagliola columns appear in the south hall and screen of the entrance hall. Original wallpapers and damask coverings remain in place. The principal corridor ends in a mirrored arcade with bas-relief panels and is closed by a painted-glass panel inserted by Philip Wilkinson. Eighteenth-century work surviving from the old Brodsworth Hall includes some panelled doors and fireplaces in the south hall and adjacent dining room.

The house was built from the proceeds of the controversial will of Peter Thellusson, who died in 1797. He sought to control his estate beyond the grave by leaving £700,000 with its accumulated interest to be inherited by the eldest great-grandson following the deaths of all intermediate lineal male descendants.